With the advent of transmission of multimedia content such as video over the Internet and other communications networks, there is any ever-increasing need for increased data rate capacity on communication networks. Often, optical networks form backbones of communications networks, where the increased traffic at the edges of the network aggregates to several gigabit of network traffic. Therefore, optical communication techniques are being challenged to meet the demand on communications network data capacity. Laying down optical transmission media such as fiber optics often requires large amount of capital expenditure and may not always be a suitable options due to the expenses involved and other regulatory issues.